the fashion of the world

Inevitably when the temperatures climb as they will today, I think about the history of women’s fashion. Almost every summer - in every heat wave - I think to myself, thank God I live in a century where layers of chemises, bloomers, petticoats, some sort of skirt shaping apparatus, and intricately buttoned pieces of dress are not the socially required norm. I am very glad I can wear crop pants and sandals to work where I escape the sultry air by sitting under a bone chilling blast of AC.

This annual gratitude for the temporal placement of my birth filtered into my brain today as I drove to work. I once again pondered the question of why it was considered indecent and morally reprehensible for a woman to show her legs or ankle or any exhibition of flesh that allowed ventilation of that skin. Because… now that we got over that… it just seems so silly and ugh, dreadful.

So maybe, I think, that is proof that we as people got over ourselves and evolved for the betterment of humanity. I don’t have to keep a bottle of smelling salts handy because I am not prone to fainting spells. And certainly the ability to breathe has increased the oxygen to my brain, which may or may not contribute to my determination to learn and understand things.

It is kind of encouraging to think that human nature actually does take steps forward and figures out the rules of decency are sometimes … well… dumb. And yet, there are times when we figure out a wrong, make it right, and then retreat back to the wrong all over again. Or maybe, there is some progress we just don’t want to keep.

Monday was the anniversary of D-Day. Something I noted in quiet reflection because I have come to respect and admire that ‘greatest generation’ so much more in recent years. The men and women who survived the Great Depression and fought two theaters of a World War, who picked themselves up again and created a country that took care of itself and (for better or worse) much of the rest of the world. A flawed generation that disregarded the evils of racism or misogyny. But… a generation that saw devastation and decided to make things better by helping one another.

And now… a lot of those souls have left this earth or are close to making their exits. Are they taking that memory of helping one another with them? Are we forgetting all that they did when we decide that we shouldn’t pay for their Medicare or Social Security? Have we decided that the progress they made to make lives of individuals throughout this country easier and less challenging isn’t worth keeping… because that progress isn’t actually a comfort and ease of our own?

Obviously, the issue of poverty and fashion are two separate ideas. Wilting under the pressure of a corset and hoop skirt in the humidity isn’t the same as waning beneath the oppression of unemployment… or is it? Don’t we still need the freedom to breathe in order to attempt our best potential? 

But honestly, none of it matters if we don’t care.